Mr. Waffle is away for a couple of days and standards have slipped. The children say, in great excitement, “Are we foraging for dinner?” This consists of staring at the contents of the fridge/freezer and hauling out what appeals. Tonight the Princess, upholder of standards, has promised to make us chicken rissoles from Monday’s leftover chicken. I think, however, we all feel that the return of Mr. Waffle will be a good thing.
Princess
Blood and Gore
My loving husband was virtuously cleaning the cooker one morning and managed to give himself a knock on the overhead extractor which led to him bleeding copiously all over the kitchen floor and down the side of his face in a very dramatic manner. The children and I were very alarmed. No more cooker cleaning for him.
In other – admittedly tenuously connected – blood on the kitchen floor stories, the cat caught a blackbird and brought it into the house. A blackbird is quite a big bird to have in the house, particularly when a cat is haring after it in delight. The childminder and the children ran out of the house and shouted at the cat and the bird through the kitchen window with results such as you might expect. The childminder rang Mr. Waffle for directions on opening the kitchen window (trickier than you might think – particularly from outside). The Princess bravely ventured in and scooped up the cat and locked her into Michael’s room to the cat’s intense chagrin. The bird lay behind the kettle with a wing stuck out at an odd angle. The kitchen was plastered with blood and feathers. The childminder and the boys went to inspect the damage and the bird, like something from a creepy horror movie, sprang up on its feet and gave them heart failure. It began to fly again just as Mr. Waffle, feeling that support was needed on the home front, came back so he was able to help usher it out the window. Then he set to clearing up blood and feathers so that by the time I got home from work all that remained was a dramatic story and small feathers which turned up for quite a while in the oddest places. Is he not a saint?
Cat looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
Lights, Camera, Action, Budget
The Princess had a fantastic maths class recently. Each group of students was given a budget of €800 and told to produce a film.
There was a range of rules, such as:
Brad Pitt will halve his fee if Rowan Atkinson is in the film but Rowan Atkinson will double his, if Brad Pitt is in the film;
Brad Pitt needs €5 a day lunch money. Comment from herself – what is he eating? Comment from me – how much is Neve Campbell charging? Her – Nothing, she brings her own lunch.
Herself was very well up on the maths but perhaps less so on popular culture – sample conversation as reported to me:
Boy in her group: So, we’re going to need to cast Brad Pitt.
Her: Why can’t we have Adam Sandler; he’s much cheaper.
Boy: We can’t have Adam Sandler in a horror movie.
Her: Maybe he could expand his repertoire.
Boy: And we’ll need an axe.
Her: It costs €30 for a weapon kit. Can we not use other weapons aside from the axe to get value for our money?
Boy: No.
I don’t know much about films but I think that she might be a born producer.
Let off the Leash
May 17 was a beautiful day and I noticed (on the way home from a Communion, of course) that there were quite a few families in the small park near our house. Since, it was “Take your children to the park and leave them there” day, I decided when we got home to send the three children off to the park together alone for the first time. They took an unhealthy picnic and off they went for an hour and a half.
They had a great time. Nobody was run over. Nobody was even sunburnt. They reported back that the boys played soccer with some other children; they all rolled down the hill; and herself lay on the picnic mat and read her book. It was delightfully peaceful at home. Do not mock, if your children spend all day on the green and only come in at tea time. I know that you knew this all along.
11
The Princess is 11 today.
She is as good as she is beautiful.
Channelling Pippi Longstocking:
And also Yulia Tymoshenko:
She is in general a sunny child. She is also a very determined child. I have discovered that I am the only parent of my acquaintance who is barred from her child’s bedroom. Her aunt gave her door knob hangers to decorate for her birthday. I imagine that we will be seeing a fair amount of this one:
And this one:
[Please note use of subjunctive which fills her pedantic mother’s heart with joy.]
But this one rather less:
She is a clever child and can be a bit too smart for her own good. She is doing the second reading at mass on Sunday. It is short but after reading it twice, she had memorised it. I was suitably impressed and said so. “Well, I am a product of the Irish education system where rote learning is particularly valued,” said she. I swear I am not making this up.
Walking to school one morning, Daniel asked me: “If the rain comes from sea water, why doesn’t it taste salty?” “Good question, I wonder why that might be,” I said [momentarily stumped – alright, look it was early, I am never at my best in the mornings]. “For heaven’s sake Mum,” said Herself, “the water evaporates but the salt doesn’t!” “What she said,” I said weakly. In my further defence, I don’t spend every waking minute doing the water cycle which does rather seem to be the pattern in schools.
She continues to fight for equality in an unequal world. There were separate maths sheets for the boys and girls the other day. The boys had to cost filling a party bag and the girls had to buy a wardrobe on a budget. She protested to the teacher that this seemed wrong and the teacher said that she could do the boys’ one, if she liked. So she and her friend M did but she was a bit dubious about the benefits of her intervention. I reassured her that she was raising the consciousness of her classmates but she remained dubious.
She asks me hard theological questions. Sample: “When Jesus fasted in the desert was it days only like Ramadan or nights as well? If not, did he eat what he found or eat nothing at all?” I really cannot say. Her friend M, the atheist poked her when they were doing about the persecution of Galileo in school and said, “Your religion.” But she knew, that in the matter of science, at least, the catholic church has moved on quite a bit. Still on religion – she and I sing in the church choir. It is killing me. We are learning this and I am singing alto with the greatest difficulty but she is flying through it and I think quite enjoying herself. In my defence can I point out that sopranos may have to struggle to hit high notes, altos get to sing the dull bits.
She loves to read. She loves to learn things and is interested in a very diverse range of fields leading to questions about the nature of the universe – philosophical and practical – which pin me to my collar. She has a particular interest in criminology and nurtures a burning, but so far unrealised, ambition to go to a course on this. I sometimes think that being the eldest makes her a bit too grown up. Her brothers seem, in many ways, much younger than her even though there are only 2 and a half years between them. I suppose that this is an occupational hazard of being the eldest.
She still likes walking in the mountains and Dublin is great for that. We can drive to the Dublin mountains in half an hour. Wicklow in an hour and up to Louth reasonably speedily as well. Possibly due to her mother’s pernicious influence, she is also fond of art galleries and the nicer kind of tea room.
In lots of ways, I can see that her views and her personality are shaped by us but in other ways she is completely her own person. She is, for example, very fond of poetry and reads a fair amount of it. Personally, I can take or leave poetry and only read a little and the same is true of her father.
If I come in tired or cranky, she will sometimes say, “Sit down and I will make you a cup of tea.” Her cooking career continues apace. She made her own birthday cake yesterday. Insert your own poignant comment about working parents here.
Tonight, somewhat against my better judgement, we are having four of her friends to stay the night. I feel unnerved. I daresay it will all pass off peacefully. They are all nice, well-behaved children. Deep breaths.
It is lovely having an 11 year old in the house. I find her easy to be with. My Nana used to say “Easy to live with is beauty” which is a bit like Cordelia in King Lear in terms of compliments, I know, but she was absolutely right. I like being with the Princess. She is a kind, companionable presence and will happily read her book while I read mine. Last night when her father was out and her brothers were in bed, we chatted while putting away the shopping and unloading the dishwasher together. Not the most exciting evening but life is made up largely of the unexciting parts and it so nice when they are pleasant and easy.
A very happy birthday to my wonderful daughter: we are so lucky to have her.
An Eye to her Public
Her: Do you remember that time I was speaking pidgin Dutch?
Me: Um, yeah, sort of.
Her: And you said that it was like simplified Dutch?
Me: Mmm.
Her: And I asked whether you thought I was speaking Afrikaans.
Me: OK.
Her: I thought that was quite witty of me but I see that it hasn’t appeared on your blog.